Away from home: exploring the challenge of a diverse practice - practice

Residential Architect, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Cheryl Weber

For six years, the Houston architecture firm Curtis and Windham focused on perfecting its first love: the design of traditionally styled single-family homes. Partners William Curtis and Russell Windham reached a turning point five years ago, however, when they learned of plans to rebuild a burned-out 1860s Catholic church in historic Jefferson, Tex. It took 15 phone calls to convince the church's building committee to grant them an interview as candidates. But once they landed the commission and later delivered a successful project, they began to regularly add institutions to their mix of work. "You do the things you have to do to build up a practice," Curtis says. "There are certain lessons you go through on how to get jobs and make money. We feel like good architects are able to design a wide variety of building types."

For many residential architects, diversifying into institutional work is a basic necessity in order to grow their business, compete for clients and employees, and even out economic cycles. But they're also drawn to the different set of challenges and issues that come with institutional work. Rather than working directly with the end user, suddenly they're juggling committees and building consensus. One week they might be designing a college dorm, another week a park visitors' center in an unfamiliar ecosystem. "You never get stale," says Susan Maxman, FAIA, of Susan Maxman and Partners in Philadelphia. "You're always trying to problem solve and think of new ways to do things."

Public buildings, in particular, offer architects a greater sense of intellectual satisfaction because they're designing something that reflects a community's spirit. Whereas a custom home is gratifying to a small family, a city library, say, touches the entire community across a broad spectrum of people. "There's nothing finer than experiencing a library that provides full service to the community, from kids and the elderly to tourists and businesspeople," says Will Bruder, AIA, of Will Bruder Architects in Phoenix. "Everybody benefits from the art, the craft, and the concepts you've created."

making the leap

For architects heavily invested in residential work, however, getting a foot in the door can be difficult. Curtis and Windham won the church committee's confidence by persistently demonstrating the strength of their ideas and by pointing out the experience they had gained working on similar projects at their previous employer, Hartman-Cox Architects in Washington, D.C. Designing large-scale, houses also can be a fast track to institutional work. The firm has designed custom homes that cost as much as $25 million and require commercial contractors and structural materials such as concrete and steel. "Our preparedness to do institutional projects is better today because our domestic architecture has grown in scale," Curtis says. "We can be very persuasive now that we can do it as well as anybody else."

Muse Architects in Washington, D.C. (see its work on page 72), has increased its share of church and school work from 5 percent to 50 percent during the last six years. On its first church project, when the deal came down to Muse Architects and one other firm, Stephen Muse, AIA, had his speech ready. "We know the other firm is good and has made many more churches," he told the clients. "If that's your criteria, we lose. But we'd like to show you the houses we've done and show you why your church could be more like one of our houses. Our family rooms could be your fellowship hall, our courtyards the area outside your worship space." Says Muse, "Obviously it takes a very sophisticated client to make that leap of faith. But they said, 'You're right, that's the feeling we want.' It's a compelling argument to a lot of institutional groups, and we've been running with it ever since."

An architectural niche also can provide a segue to institutional work. In Atlanta, Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein's extensive historic preservation, renovation, and adaptive reuse work with developers and on single-family homes helped it win ongoing contracts with the Georgia board of regents, which oversees schools and universities. The 20-year-old firm Moule & Polyzoides in Pasadena, Calif., also began its practice doing adaptive reuse. Given its strong focus on urbanism, many of the firm's institutional projects are referrals from the town planning side. "People trust us and know us personally, so they hand us commissions," says partner Stefanos Polyzoides. "Not all of our institutional projects go through the competitive process."

Often, a quirk of fate opens the door to diversifying. Leddy Maytum Stacy, San Francisco (see its work on page 70), happened upon one of its earliest institutional projects--a Waldorf school in the mid-1980s--through a contractor who had ties to the school. Since then, "we've found that going after public schools is a different market altogether, and one we've had less success with," says Bill Leddy, AIA, who oversees a stiff of 15. "Independent schools are looking for something out of the ordinary and have a different approach to hiring an architect." By contrast, he says, most institutional clients have a very sophisticated bureaucracy. "Even if we are invited to submit a proposal, we're competing against as many as 30 to 40 other firms."